Tag: LAWSUIT

Comcast just won its appeal of a 2008 FCC ruling, and BitTorrent users may end up the losers. Comcast was effectively blocking torrents using "network management" techniques, and the FCC ordered them to make their network management scheme public and stop singling out BitTorrent traffic. This week's Court of Appeals ruling reverses that FCC decision and gives Comcast free reign again, TorrentFreak ...

The six year legal battle over Google Library Project has turned a new page, with a court hearing in New York that may determine the future for the controversial venture to build an online library of more than 18 million books. The hearing, before Federal Judge Danny Chin, will decide the fairness of the 2008 settlement, between Google and the Authors Guild and the Association of American ...

Wired's Threat Level reports that federal prosecutors seek a 25-year sentence for Albert Gonzalez, a hacker who is responsible for massive identity theft - over 130 million credit and debit card numbers. Gonzalez is behind identity theft at TJX, DSW Shoe Warehouse, Office Max, Hannaford Brothers, 7-Eleven, and Heartland Payment Systems, among others. As is quite usual in such cases, defense ...

The YouTube vs. Viacom lawsuit has turned into quite the exciting drama this weekend, with both sides making accusations via their respective blogs. YouTube says Viacom constantly uploaded its own material from fake accounts, and then filed DMCA complaints about it. Viacom accuses YouTube of being a pirate organization that profits from copyright infringement. Here are the key points each side ...

Yay privacy! Students in Philadelphia received laptops from school to get a better learning environment, which is actually a good thing. But the build-in webcams can be covertly activated by the schools' administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students - and more shocking: their families. Yes, at home. The issue came to light as a kid was disciplined for "improper behavior in his ...

You've probably heard of the recently-settled Intel/AMD anti-trust lawsuit -- most notably, the part of the resolution that involved Intel paying AMD $1.25 billion. But there was a lot more that went into the November 2009 settlement! For example, can you believe that the Intel compiler, the one used to produce a large percentage of all computer programs, intentionally cripples AMD processors? ...

... and I thought one online social suicide machine was enough, but I guess not: there's another site called Seppukoo and it's just been C&D'd by Facebook's crack team of lawyers. Facebook seems to be taking these 'virtual suicide' services rather seriously, and in a classic case of legalese-owns-you, Seppukoo is being smacked down for everything other than assisting suicide. Soliciting ...

One of the largest and most popular BitTorrent search sites, IsoHunt, has just had a court judgment against it, in favor of Columbia Pictures. You're probably wondering what the big deal is: IsoHunt deals with illegal movies... so it's just a matter of time before it gets shut down... right? Well, kind of! A judge decided that IsoHunt 'induced theft' (i.e. copyright infringement), and thus it ...

Reported by our ugly sister Engadget, it seems that Microsoft has finally lost its appeal against i4i in the long-running 'XML patent' lawsuit. Microsoft were quick to release a statement to the press, allaying any fears that Office 2007, or 2010, will become unavailable. Office 2010, we assume, will still be released on schedule, and new versions of Office and Word 2007 without the infringing ...

It had to happen eventually -- I'm just shocked it took this long. Bing!, exclamation point not optional unless I also want to be sued, has filed a suit against Microsoft for confusing the public of St. Louis Missouri with its Bing (no exclamation point) search engine. It's the kind of news that warms me in both weird and wonderful ways. First, it reminds us all that capitalism is working as ...

Samsung, JVC, Best Buy and 11 other consumer electronics companies have just been smacked-down for their continued breaching of the GNU General Public License (GPL). The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has just filed a lawsuit, stating that the companies have had plenty of time to respond to repeated requests of compliance with the GPL. Now their fate rests with the justice system... and I ...

You may have heard of Psystar, an infamous manufacturer of Mac clone "open computers." They're best known for frequently getting into legal hot water with Apple over everything from trademarks to copyrights to selling Apple's OS X operating on non-Apple computers. Apple just took Psystar to school on that last issue, winning summary judgment in a California court on copyright violations and ...

A few months ago there was talk that a lawsuit could bring down the popular VoIP client Skype. That's because Skype was involved in a dispute with Joltid, a company that Skype was licensing technology from. Today Skype announced that the company has reached a settlement with Joltid. The net result is that Skype now owns the technology and Joltid founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis ...

A marketing firm in Knoxville, TN, is suing its former client, a pizza place, over negative comments left on Facebook and Twitter. Even if this lawsuit weren't doomed to fail, and even if the marketers, Low and Tritt, had asked for less than an absurd 2 million dollars from The Pizza Kitchen, this would still be a terrible, useless bit of litigation. Without this lawsuit, I would never have heard ...

After receiving a court order to stop selling Microsoft Word due to patent-infringing technology, Microsoft warned that the consequences could be dire if the injunction wasn't stayed. And by dire, I mean, Microsoft might have had to pull Word for a few months while writing new code to get around the problem. Fortunately (for Microsoft at least, and anyone looking to pick up a copy of Office or ...